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Document transcript

A prevalent belief among IT folk is that automation, by default, will enhance the quality oftesting.

How true is that belief?

“There is a time and place for everything”, as the popular idiom goes, and that holds true for testautomation too.

Certain scenarios in which automation is generally a good option:

1. Repetitive Tests

A system that needs the same tests executed periodically is agood candidate for automation. Take for example, supportprojects that must perform regression tests for every PR/CR.Manual effort in such cases tends to be huge and error-prone.Automation can prove very efficient in such cases.

It makes sense to opt for a testing tool with a version controlledrepository to manage the test scripts.

The cost of automation and the initial effort investment forscript creation is usually greater than for manual testing, and it must be analyzed how far thisinvestment will pay off in the end. A few pointers to help make that decision:



How many repetitions of tests are expected, for how long? A longer “life” of the testscripts tips the scale in favor of automation.

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How expensive is the tool?

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How much time/effort will it take to create the test scripts? Automation may not simplybe record-and-play, a lot of design and coding may have to go in to achieve the desiredresult.

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Are incremental changes expected to the scripts?

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Do testers on the team require training on the tool?

“Repetitive tests => automation” is a fair thumb rule but not an inviolable one. A costlyautomation setup on one hand and quick-to-build on-the-fly manual tests on the other, and youmight just find that automation will not be useful even if you expect a certain number ofrepetitions.

2. Manually Infeasible Tests

Before an application is deployed in the productionenvironment, it might be critical to determine how theapplication will behave under huge user load or when dealingwith millions of records.

Such test scenarios are usually best simulated with automation.In high risk conditions, where the cost of missing a test mightbe disastrous, even a single-time use of automation might be aworthwhile decision.

3. Low Severity/Probability Of “Human” Bugs

Automation can perform some jobs far better than a human canhope to do. Give the tool and the human tester two excel sheetswith 10,000 rows of data each to reconcile with each other. Noprizes for guessing who can do it faster, without errors.

But then, humans are far better at another sort of testing.Humans can notice oddities beyond documented tests. Does theUI look too cluttered? Does the mouse flicker strangely whenmoved over the button? Did the screen behind the modalwindow just blink?

Automation is limited to testing what it is programmed to do. Not everything that the humanmind can observe/analyze can be programmed, and so, automation will miss out on capturingsome bugs. The question to ask is: how important are those missed-out bugs? An unstable systemmight not be ready for automation, as severe “manual” bugs may get ignored. Automation isbetter suited to systems in which the “human” bugs are expected to be fewer and are of lowseverity.

In Closing

A point worth remembering is that automation vs. manual does not have to be an either-ordecision. A mix can work. Take a multi-step workflow–

a couple of steps might be fit forautomation, not the entire flow. Automate only those steps that will benefit from automation.

A quick QTP tip that may improve the performance of your scripts (for aweb based app)

While working on a web applications using QTP, you may have noticed most of the time QTPruns too fast in comparison to the application. MoreoverQTP would not perform anyoperation on a particular page unless that page has loaded completely (100%). You maywonder in bewilderment about what to do to make the application (web page) load faster.

Here I would like to give you a simple tip to alleviate your pain (and waiting time) a bit.

If you will notice carefully, most of the times text on a web page renders very quickly. It is theimages that creates problem and increases the web page loading time. What if we can stop theimages from loading altogether?

All browsers provides this facility whereby you can stop pictures from showing. To do this inIE6, go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced tab. Scroll down to ‘Multimedia’ section anduncheck ‘Show pictures‘.

To do this in Firefox, go to Tools > Options > Content. Uncheck ‘Load Images automatically‘

Run your script now and let us know if thistip helped you. [For obvious reasons, this tip won'tbe of any use when you have to work on image/bitmap checkpoints.]

8 tips on advanced Regular Expressions

If you are a practitioner of regular expressions, you may be knowing, how easy it makes your lifewhile dealing with pattern of strings. Regular Expressions is one topic, I feel, everyone in thesoftware industry–who is even remotely related to programming-

should gain mastery over. Ican’t tell you enough, how many times regular expressions have came to my rescue.

Though the syntax they have used is PHP-Perl compatible but (after some minorchanges in syntax) you can use it for VB Scripting needs as well. The underlying conceptsbehind reg-ex pretty much remains the same for all programming languages.

They have divided the topic into eight sub headings

1.

Greediness/Laziness

2.

Back Referencing: is a way to refer to previously matched patterns inside a regularexpression. (One of my favorites)

3.

Named Groups

4.

Word Boundaries

5.

Atomic Groups

6.

Recursion

7.

Call backs

8.

Commenting

Acomplete guide to working on Quality Center with QTP

Q: What are the prerequisites to connect QTP with QC?

A:

1.

CheckAllow other Mercury products to run tests and componentspresent underTools > Options > Run in QTP